Engine Terminal

EB-14 drifts into the siding at Big Chimney, WV.

Saturday, December 24, 2016

December Update

Well, 2016 is rapidly coming to an end. I haven't posted nearly as often this past year as I had originally intended. Perhaps that will change next year. In any event, here's an update on what's currently under way on the railroad.

First up is GP9 1824. This is a Proto 2000 shell on an Athearn Genesis chassis with a factory installed Tsunami. This Genesis loco was one of the early GP9 runs that had the wrong window height and errors in the height of the doors on the long hood. Good friend Anthony Hardy alerted me to a sale in which these locos were going for $135 which isn't a whole lot more than the cost of the decoder. The detail on the underframe, fuel tanks and trucks is outstanding. All I had to do was cut out the coupler pockets on the frame and mount them on the body.

The chassis was just finished on another GP9 while the body is in the paint shop. The CWE locomotive roster included a large number of GP9s which were part of the original dieselization of the railroad. Until the completion of 1824, there was only one on the railroad. In addition to this next one, there is another currently in the works.

Two more panels have been converted to pushbutton control since the last post.

Next up is the panel at Nelsonville. This project will take a little longer to complete as the panel will have two signal repeaters- one for the signal off the Dry Creek Branch and the other for the westbound main signal. Neither of these can be seen from the aisle.

The ballast in the east end of Nelsonville has been finished. Some additional weathering around the switches and the installation of switch stands will wrap up the scenery here. I won't finish the track closest to the fascia until the structures are built for this area. The old coach serving as a yard office will be replaced with a structure similar to the yard office at Elk Run on the C&O. There will be several track worker shanties and a RIP shed here as well.

The paint shop is full of cars awaiting some weathering. Included in this group is a special car from the Suffolk Northern. More to come on that project.

And last up is a PRR X58 boxcar that was just added to the roster. This is one of the new Tangent cars and, in the spirit of the season, it's "a beaut."

Happy New Year to you, too, Mike! And thanks for the kind words. I used a technique that I learned from Gary Christensen and Kevin "K-Pack" over on the Rustbucket forum on the X58. I applied a wash of acrylic burnt umber and ivory black to the sides. I then went back and removed the wash from the white lettering using a toothpick that I dampened with water. In a lot of the photos I've seen of these cars, the sides and yellow lettering are grimed up and faded while the white remains pretty clean. I believe the toothpick technique captured this look. And I have one of the X58 in PC, too, that will be on the railroad soon.